Margaret Thatcher’s isolation over Westland and the US bombing of Libya – as well as fears about the standards of her driving – are among the subjects revealed within 40,000 pages of her papers opening to the public today at the Churchill Archives Centre.

The story of Native North America – from its vast contribution to world culture, to the often taboo social problems of drinking, gambling and violence – is the subject of a sweeping new history by a Cambridge academic and authority on the subject.

New research shows the sudden oak death epidemic in California cannot now be stopped, but that its tremendous ecological and economic impacts could have been greatly reduced if control had been started earlier. The research also identifies new strategies to enhance control of future epidemics, including identifying where and how to fell trees, as “there will be a next time”.